My Experience: One Year of HIIT

Submitted by Melissa on Sun, 06/08/2014 - 20:04

Last year I was kicked out of physical therapy, which was my primary form of exercise at the time, because well...I got better. Before that I did Crossfit, I don't know if that was part of me being in physical therapy though. I just had chronic neck and shoulder pain. The physical therapy, consisting primarily of gentle upper body and core exercises, was fairly effective for that. I was disappointed though that it didn't seem to do much for my posture.

When I was consistent with it, it seemed to prevent the neck and shoulder pain.

My muscles didn't totally atrophy.

It wasn't very stressful.

It didn't take up much of my time.

I didn't totally hate it.

Then the bad

I also haven't built much muscle that I can notice. I don't really feel stronger either.

It can't really be scaled up effectively to adjust for greater caloric intake. I increased calorie intake because of writing about restaurants and this brutal winter I worked from home more often (my regular commute is walking), which led to the kind of gains I didn't want, which was fat.

My posture looks the same.

So I'm probably going to have to put greater time into something else, like weight lifting or swimming. I think it can function pretty well if you have a more systematic exercise program and you just have a short interruption where you can't devote a lot of time to exercise but want to maintain some of its benefits.

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